Creative Commons License

Once again I am being requested to donate funds needed to revitalize the California Republican Party … after all it is an emergency to maintain the party as a counterbalance to the overwhelming influence of the progressive socialist democrats.

Except that it isn’t a counterbalance to anything and I am calling Bullsh*t!

In every case where the Republicans could have thwarted egregious spending on illegal aliens, the continuing destruction of our infrastructure which is so in need of repair, replacement, or build-out, or when onerous taxes were proposed – just enough Republicans seemed to switch sides to give the progressives another victory and placing another nail in the coffin of the long-suffering taxpayers and residents of California. Most of these RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) were to be termed out and apparently wanted to be named to meaningless commissions and boards that paid six-figure salaries for just a few hours per week; if at all.

How many people remember Abel Maldonado, the turncoat, who voted for another “historic” tax increase and was rewarded by our lying scumbag Republican Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, with an appointment to an empty Lt. Governor slot?

Congressional candidate Abel Maldonado is no friend of taxpayers. Not only has Maldonado refused to sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge for his CA-24 race, he betrayed voters by violating his written commitment to them to “oppose any and all tax hikes” as a state legislator. In 2009, Maldonado cast the deciding vote for a $13 billion tax hike. Although the former State Senator and Lieutenant Governor may have the talking points of a Republican candidate, he is far from a supporter of limited government and pro-growth economic policies.

The 2009 tax hike was the largest tax increase of any state in history. It seemed unconscionable at the time that in the middle of the largest recession in modern history, Maldonado’s political ambitions took precedent over a promise he made to the taxpayers who elected him. Under the facade of “compromise,” Maldonado stood with Sacramento special interests and against Californians. <Source>

Quid pro quo …

On the November 23, 2009, episode of The Jay Leno Show, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he was nominating Maldonado as lieutenant governor. Schwarzenegger cited Maldonado's "bipartisanship and postpartisanship...He makes decisions based on what's best for the people rather than what's best for the party. He has helped us, many times, pass a budget, which was very important." <Source>

Schwarzenegger himself sold out the people of California numerous times, but one of his final acts was to commute the sentence of the murderous son of an important progressive socialist democrat and political crony with no apology and admitting it was a favor to a friend.The son was involved in the murder of an innocent student just because the son and his pals were denied admission to a party. Everything he did, from destroying evidence to bragging that his father would get him off, was abhorrent – and now this person walks free among us.

Then there is the more recent issue of California’s GOP leadership and the progressive’s newest major tax increase …

Six weeks after helping Democrats revamp California’s landmark climate change policy and facing a torrent of anger from conservative critics, the Republican leader of the state Assembly agreed Thursday to step down and allow a rural Northern California lawmaker to lead the GOP’s fractured caucus.

The shuffle, which saw Chad Mayes replaced by Assemblyman Brian Dahle as leader, comes as the California Republican Party’s numbers continue to shrink among registered voters and in elected office. Republicans make up just over a quarter of the state’s total voters, while Democrats in the last election won supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature.

Rancor over Mayes’ leadership began last month, when the Yucca Valley assemblyman aligned with Democratic state lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown to extend the cap-and-trade program, a move made as the Trump administration withdraws from the battle against global warming. Chummy photos of a beaming Mayes sitting with Democratic leaders after the vote spread over social media, infuriating Republican activists who saw his vote as a betrayal.

On a national level, where the numbers are infinitely larger, the system is much the same …

In 2009 the progressive socialist democrats controlled the federal government, so the GOP asked the voters to give them, at the very least, the House of Representatives. In 2010, the GOP had the House where they could pass legislation, knowing it would be killed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

In 2014, the GOP complained that their big ideas for a smaller government, spending controls, fiscal reform, and immigration reform were being thwarted by the progressive socialist Democrats in the Senate and the GOP asked for the Senate. The GOP voters rose up and gave them the Senate.

Then in 2016, the GOP complained that now they held the House and the Senate, it was the progressive socialist Democrat in the White House that kept them from accomplishing their lofty and well-thought-out goals. The GOP asked for the House, the Senate, and the Presidency – and the voters answered affirmatively giving them both chambers of Congress and the Presidency.

So with a stacked deck in their favor, the GOP was ready to proceed – except they weren't !!! The plans they claimed to have were bogus and merely outlines of the legislation they were trying to craft. The leadership was so afraid to use the power of their respective offices like the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or former Senate Majority Leader Reid that they whiffed. They simply refused to use the procedural tricks of the previous administration to advance their promised agenda. Apparently more worried about their own future in the 2018 congressional election cycle than the Constitution, the nation, or their constituents.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan are so worried about their own political futures that they are using their own access to funds to fund opposition to known conservatives in favor of moderate toadies that will do as they are told.

Cowardice in action …

Other than the Secretary of Defense, General James Mattis, there appear to be few people with the moral clarity, ability, and guts to take on the progressive socialist democrats. And, General Mattis is pro-military and relatively apolitical. He is a patriot willing to die for the Constitution and his Country. The others are afraid of getting paper cuts.

One would expect that Attorney General Jess Sessions would exert a strong hand at the Department of Justice and the FBI – especially when it comes to closing out all of those ongoing, never-ending Obama-era scandals. Grand juries should be empaneled, and people held accountable for their criminal acts. But, he appears to be less a conservative and more a wimp than a man of action. He may have recused himself from the bogus Russia investigation, but nothing else. In fact, Hillary and Bill Clinton’s relationship with the Russians and the Chinese should be fair game. But, then again, he is another Senator that lacks the cojones to do much more than sitting on the dais and ask convoluted and politically loaded questions. It’s not about fact finding, it’s about generating soundbites and video clips for your next campaign commercial.

One would expect Vice President Pence to be more than a political doorstop waiting for his moment in the sun.

Use the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s technique … when asked to defend Trump or his policies, Tillerson smiles and says, President Trump can speak for himself.

Bottom line …

The biggest question being asked of the GOP is: If not now, when?

Like the 2016 presidential election, the GOP is praying that the voters will ignore the past betrayals and view the GOP as the lesser of two evils -- and therefore worthy of being returned to power. With Trump, we stopped a corrupt, lying, crony Marxist Hillary Clinton from appointing a Supreme Court Judge. And, other than withdrawing from the nonbinding Paris climate accords, little else has happened on the major issues of health care, tax reform, and immigration. Trump rules with the same “phone and pen” wielded by former President Obama – with about the same results until the next President decides to overturn those “Executive Orders.” And Congress refuses to engage in any meaningful manner.

With few exceptions, the GOP has committed suicide. President Trump is impotent and a victim of his own self-aggrandizing ego. Congress is paralyzed by the prospect of what might happen in 2018. And the people are screwed while the progressive socialist democrats and a complicit mainstream media condition the 2018 battlefield in favor of the progressive socialist Democrats.

-- steve

"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius

Once again Congress is playing games to create an artificial crisis used to sell profligate and wasteful spending to the American public …

Debt Ceiling ‘Brinksmanship’ Could Test U.S. Top-Notch Credit Rating: Fitch says failure to raise the U.S. debt limit would prompt a review of the U.S. sovereign credit rating

Fitch Ratings said Wednesday that a failure to raise the U.S. debt limit in a “timely manner” would prompt a review of the country’s credit rating, which is currently at AAA — the highest possible. The ability of lawmakers to meet two key fiscal deadlines next month will serve as a litmus test for “coherent fiscal policy making and cooperation,” according to the bond-rating firm. “Brinkmanship over the debt limit could ultimately have rating consequences, as failure to raise it would jeopardize the Treasury’s ability to meet debt service and other obligations,” wrote Charles Seville, James McCormack and Mark Brown on Fitch’s sovereign rating group.

The Treasury Department has employed extraordinary measures to pay its bills since March, when the previous suspension of the debt limit expired and the new ceiling was set at nearly $20 trillion. If Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling to allow new borrowing, the U.S. could default on its debt or miss payments of benefits and salaries.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said Monday that there here was “zero chance” that the U.S. would fail to raise the federal debt ceiling. <Source: Wall Street Journal>

It may not work this time …

One, President Trump appears immune from criticism from the “fake news” media and the progressive socialist democrats.

Two, even if there is a government shut-down, we really know that the entire government doesn’t shut down; mostly the outward facing public functions like the national parks and other non-essential services. The government employees get a few days off and some employees are retroactively paid for doing virtually nothing.

Three, Fitch Ratings, complicit in the mortgage meltdown and enduing derivatives debacle cannot possibly project actual government spending, as opposed to budgetary items, and would face a massive backlash if they downgraded government debt and cost the taxpayers billions of dollars in additional interest. Especially when their leaders should have gone to jail instead of being allowed to pay fines and neither admitting nor denying the allegations arrayed against them.

Four, how many times can Congress fail to do its business and then provoke a last-minute artificial crisis?

Five, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan talk a good game, but both are progressives who are only too willing to jump in bed with the progressive socialist democrats as long as they get their piece of the proverbial pie.

Bottom line …

What happened to all of the promises to reduce spending and curtail the government’s waste, fraud, and abuse?

Why are they funding departments and agencies who have proven incapable to tracking all of the money they have spent?

We are so screwed.

-- steve

"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius

Like all bureaucracies who fail their primary mission, NASA (The National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has turned to dealing with climate change where the only thing that needs to be produced are reports that look scientific but contain so many weasel-words that they are useless to predict future events or provide useful solutions that are on a scale that can deal with interrupting natural temperature fluctuations.

I believe NASA should be defunded or limited to $100.00 per day until they are capable of putting astronauts on the International Space Station without paying the Russians hundreds of millions of dollars for taxi services.

Here NASA appears to propose a solution dealing with volcanoes that apparently can have catastrophic unintended consequences …

NASA to Stop a Doomsday Supervolcano by Stealing its Heat -- NASA is worried about the Yellowstone supervolcano exploding, so instead they're going to harness its energy for good.

Beneath Yellowstone National Park is a giant volcano. The heat from this volcano powers all of the park's famous geysers and hot springs, so most tourists probably don't worry about having tons of hot magma under their feet. But perhaps they should: The Yellowstone supervolcano is a disaster waiting to happen. The supervolcano erupts about every 600,000 years, and it's been about that long since the last eruption. That means the volcano could erupt any day now, and if it does it'll send enough dust and ash into the sky to blot out the sun for years, along with blowing a 25-mile-wide crater in the western U.S. That's why a group of NASA scientists and engineers are developing a plan to prevent an eruption by stealing the volcano's heat.

Volcanoes like Yellowstone spend hundreds or thousands of years gradually building up heat until they reach a critical point, and then they erupt. But outlets like geysers and hot springs can bleed out some of that heat, delaying the inevitable eruption.

NASA's plan is to drill a hole into the side of the volcano and pump water through it. When the water comes back out, it'll be heated to over 600 degrees, slowly cooling the volcano. The team hopes that given enough time, this process will take enough heat from the volcano to prevent it from ever erupting.

[OCS: The nice thing about this plan, like global warming, is that the results are hundreds of years in the future. So no real political accountability while the government siphons every more tax money for the project and its bloated politically-connected contractors.]

As a bonus, the scientists are proposing to use the heated water as a source of geothermal energy, potentially powering the entire Yellowstone region with heat from the volcano that wants to destroy it. A geothermal generator could produce energy at around $0.10 per kWh, competitive with other energy sources.

[OCS: I wasn’t aware that the mass of U.S. industrial enterprises that would benefit from lower cost energy (after a thousand years to recapture costs) is located in the region.]

Of course, this plan is the definition of "long-term." In order to siphon off enough heat to neutralize the threat of the volcano, the geothermal generator would have to be run continuously for hundreds or thousands of years. But on the flipside, that means thousands of years of free geothermal energy.

[OCS: FREE? Are these idiots delusional? Has anyone noticed that an entirely new, and vulnerable, electric grid would need to be constructed and that energy losses would be massive for intercontinental distribution. Perhaps they should turn the volcano into a federal funds sink hole and pipe money directly into the volcano until everyone associated with the original project is long dead and gone. Same effect.]

NASA hopes its proposal will be adopted soon—after all, it's only a matter of time before the volcano erupts—and that their idea will be implemented at other supervolcanoes across the world. Hopefully these generators will be in place before any of them decide to explode. Source: BBC

Elon Musk thinking …

This is a perfect project for Elon Musk who needs never make a profit while basking in media glory and sucking up infinite government subsidies. Besides, he can have a catchy name, colorful CGI Videos, and produce the same results as NASA with far fewer people.

Bottom line …

Even with advances in materials sciences, there is no way to pipe a conventional geothermal plant that can withstand the corrosive effects of high-temperature, high-pressure mineralized water. I wonder how they are going to handle the sulfuric acid that is produced when water is combined with sulfur at high temperatures and pressures?

Enough with the distraction and diversion. Unless NASA can fulfill its primary mission, they should be disbanded or defunded.

With the Nazis and the ANTIFA crowd, it is really hard to tell the difference except for the uniforms …

As far as I can tell, at least with the progressive socialist democrats, not everybody buys the agenda, but is so afraid of not being politically correct that they do not speak out. Definitely not my parent’s Democrat party.

Bottom line …

Many progressive socialist democrats believe that there can be no enemies to the left and that since speech is violence, it can be met with physical violence. One need only take a look at the City of Portland in Oregon where they canceled their annual Rose Festival parade because antifa threatened violence if Trump supporters marched under the GOP banner. The fact that the Portland Police Department said they could not guarantee the public’s safety says something about the state of law enforcement in overwhelming liberal areas that refuse to uphold the law when it comes to progressive socialist democrats.

My personal favorite would be to spray any violent crowd that fails to disperse after a lawful police order with indelible dye – and then sort them out as the emerged through perimeters where they could be questioned and searched if necessary.

This is America. Since when do we surrender to the tyranny of the minority? Especially when it involves professional politicians who care more about their self-interests than they do their constituents, community, or country.

With the number of socialists, communists, anarchists, and illegal aliens flooding the country, it will be a wonder that America will survive another 100 years with their unique brand of capitalist freedoms and Americanism.

We are so screwed.

-- steve

"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius

For those who might not recognize the name Alice Ristroph – and I am willing to be that is 99.9999% of the people in America – she is one sick or manipulative radical progressive puppy.

Alice Ristroph is a professor at Brooklyn Law School. She teaches and writes in criminal law and procedure, constitutional law, and political theory. Her recent work examines laws that regulate state violence, focusing especially on the law’s distribution of risks of physical harm. She has also been studying ways in which the law suppresses, tolerates, or even facilitates various forms of resistance to criminal justice institutions. Professor Ristroph received her J.D. and Ph.D. (political theory) from Harvard University, and she has served as a permanent or visiting faculty member at Seton Hall, Utah, Columbia, Georgetown, and Fordham law schools.

How ignorant, biased, or just plain nuts is it to argue that a natural event like an eclipse is a racial teaching moment?

Blackout - Along the path of the August 21st solar eclipse, there live almost no African Americans. The peculiar trajectory of the moon’s shadow illuminates racial isolation and compromise, past and present. -- Alice Ristroph

On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will arrive mid-morning on the coast of Oregon. The moon’s shadow will be about 70 miles wide, and it will race across the country faster than the speed of sound, exiting the eastern seaboard shortly before 3 p.m. local time. It has been dubbed the Great American Eclipse, and along most of its path, there live almost no black people.

Presumably, this is not explained by the implicit bias of the solar system. It is a matter of population density, and more specifically geographic variations in population density by race, for which the sun and the moon cannot be held responsible. Still, an eclipse chaser is always tempted to believe that the skies are relaying a message. At a moment of deep disagreement about the nation’s best path forward, here comes a giant round shadow, drawing a line either to cut the country in two or to unite it as one. Ancient peoples watched total eclipses with awe and often dread, seeing in the darkness omens of doom. The Great American Eclipse may or may not tell us anything about our future, but its peculiar path could remind us of something about our past—what it was we meant to be doing, and what we actually did along the way. And if it seems we need no reminding, consider this: We tend to backlight our history, and so run the risk of trying to recover a glory that never existed. When the light in August changes, watch carefully.

Alice takes us on a region by region recitation of history …

The Colors of the West

Oregon, where this begins, is almost entirely white. The 10 percent or so of state residents who do not identify as white are predominantly Latino, American Indian, Alaskan, or Asian. There are very few black Oregonians, and this is not an accident. The land that is now Oregon was not, of course, always inhabited by white people, but as a U.S. territory and then a state, Oregon sought to get and stay white. Among several formal efforts at racial exclusion was a provision in the original state constitution of 1857 that prohibited any “free Negro, or Mulatto” from entering and residing in the state.

Shadows in the Heartland

After Wyoming, the eclipse will go through Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. This is America’s heartland, and also, literally, the land of compromise. When Missouri sought statehood in 1819, the United States consisted of 22 states, equally divided between those that permitted slavery and those that did not. Missouri’s request to enter as a slave-holding state threatened to upset the balance, but a kind of unity was preserved with the Missouri Compromise. The deal allowed Missouri its slaves but drew a line across the nation, east-west to the Pacific Ocean, and mandated that slavery would be illegal in all other territories north of the line. Nebraska and Kansas, bordering Missouri to the west and lying just north of the compromise line, were thus to remain slavery-free. But the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed the (white) people of those territories to decide for themselves whether to have slavery. A few years later, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court would declare the Missouri Compromise to have been an unconstitutional attempt by Congress to intrude on states’ rights. A few years after that, the Civil War would begin.

The shadow of the moon doesn’t care who lives below, and in certain respects, the Constitution doesn’t care where people live, either.

The shadow of the moon doesn’t care where it falls or who lives below. And in certain respects, the federal government designed in our Constitution doesn’t care where people live, either. We need the census tallies to determine how many representatives each state sends to the House, but the census is irrelevant to the Senate: Each state gets two senators, whatever its population. This arrangement is the result of another of the many compromises that made the Constitution possible. Of course, we probably don’t need the eclipse to remind us of the Constitution’s different forms of representation. After all, every four years an Electoral College and not the people directly selects the President. Every four years we are reminded that each state gets as many electors as it has members of Congress, a system that magnifies the relative power of voters in less populous states. California has two senators and 53 representatives, giving it 55 electors for 39.25 million people, or one elector for every 713,000 people. Wyoming has two senators and only one representative, three electors for just over half a million people, or one for every 195,000 people.

Sometimes it’s hard to recall why we did it this way. There were reasons to think of equality in terms of states and not just in terms of individual people—surely there must have been. Equal states were to serve a particular vision of inclusive totality. One nation, it was thought, could accommodate and even thrive upon difference—if not racial difference in the beginning, then cultural and political difference. Separate states had and would keep different identities and ideologies, and yet still these states could be united. The states were supposed to look after the interests of individual citizens more effectively than could a national government. The states were supposed to bring everybody in without shutting anybody out.

But the equal power of states was enshrined at a time when states served white people, and never since have states’ rights been a particularly effective mechanism for racial equality. Looking back, the bargains struck to protect the states appear as resolutions to disputes among white people, including disputes about what to do with people who are not white. And looking ahead, we can expect the equal power of the states to exacerbate further the political inequality of individual persons: The farther you live from other people, the more electoral power you wield.

There aren’t many people in the southern coalmining counties of Illinois, where totality will last the longest, up to two minutes and forty seconds. Williamson County here is sometimes labeled “Bloody Williamson” thanks to several violent episodes in the region, including attacks by white union miners on black workers brought to Williamson to replace them. Not all of the violence was cross-racial, or union-based. After a 1922 massacre of 20 strikebreakers by union miners, the Ku Klux Klan established itself in the county, promising church leaders frustrated with bootlegging and hostile toward thirsty Italian immigrants that the KKK could help the churches protect “the highest ideals of the native-born white American Gentile citizenship.” Several years of gang warfare followed as local sheriffs battled the Klan to control the region. Williamson is a reminder that white skin alone cannot satisfy some visions of American totality. The Klan’s targets were not always black—there were few blacks in Williamson to target, then or now. At the last census the black population of Williamson County was about 3.8 percent, and that’s with a U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, the county seat.

Looking South, and Looking Away

Former slave-holding states are still the home to most of America’s black population. In Kentucky, Tennessee, and eventually South Carolina, the eclipse will finally pass over black Americans. Even here, though, the path of totality seems to mark the legacy of slavery and the persistence of segregation more than any form of inclusion. Kentucky permitted slavery but never seceded and instead tried to remain neutral during the Civil War. “I hope to have God on my side,” Lincoln reportedly said, “but I must have Kentucky.” Cautious, careful, incrementalist, the Emancipation Proclamation declared freedom only for slaves in rebel states and didn’t apply to border states like Kentucky. Nonetheless, the state grew increasingly disenchanted with Lincoln, and it would not ratify the Thirteenth Amendment (which formally abolishes slavery) until 1976.

The arc of the eclipse is long, and it bends toward Charleston. In South Carolina in the last 12 or 13 minutes of the Great American Eclipse, it will probably pass over more black Americans than it does throughout all of its earlier journey. After Greenville and Columbia, the eclipse goes out where so many slaves once came in: Charleston was the busiest port for the slave trade, receiving about 40 percent of all the African slaves brought into the country. Today, the Old Slave Mart is a museum. Two years ago in Charleston, Dylan Roof chose the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church as his shooting ground, quietly joining a Bible study and then opening fire on the black congregants, killing nine.

And then the shadow goes to sea, still indifferent to the earth below, indifferent to the little creatures here, indifferent to these people indifferent to their own histories. Or perhaps we are not indifferent, but just no more capable than butterflies and bees of seeing the long path and of deciding to change it. The Great American Eclipse illuminates, or darkens, a land still segregated, a land still in search of equality, a land of people still trying to dominate each other. When the lovely glow of a backlight fades, history is relentless, just one damn fact after another, one damning fact after another. America is a nation with debts that no honest man can pay. It is too much to ask that these debts simply be forgiven. But perhaps the strange path of the eclipse suggests a need for reorganization. We have figured out, more or less, how to count every person. We have not yet found a political system in which every person counts equally.

Is this an implicit pitch for socialism or communism where each person is counted equally, stripped of their freedoms, allocated their share of misery, turned into unexceptional population units to serve the state; while elitist academics tell us all “how it should be?”

Of course, no tour of America would be complete without noting the omissions …

It was the Democrat Party that gave us slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, and fought the Civil Rights acts with fervor. Many of the Democrat’s most honored members were blatant racists, segregationists, Klan Members, and those that tried to keep little Black Children from attending school. Remember Bull Connor, the Sheriff with the vicious German Shepard, he was a Democrat. Remember former President Woodrow Wilson; he was the racist who segregated the armed forces. And, it goes on and on …

Alice was quick to point out that power grab that allocated three-fifths of a personhood for purposes of allocating congressional representatives but said nothing about the full counting of illegal aliens to give a few states a disproportionate share of representational power.

One might posit, that Alice could have made the case the entire Democrat Party should be branded the party of racism and disbanded. But, then again, where would the disaffected who hate our nation, illegal aliens, and members of foreign governments find a home?

In the final analysis, I think that the entire piece is little more than virtue signaling for personal promotion and/or potential guilt for being White.

We are so screwed.

-- steve

"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius

I am no special pleader for President Trump, but I find it repugnant for a former high-ranking government official to denigrate the President of the United States in a very public manner and on a cable network with an open antipathy towards the President.

James Clapper: I Question Trump's Fitness For Office, Wonder If He Is "Looking For A Way Out"

CNN contributor James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, said after watching President Trump's Tuesday night rally in Phoenix he questions his fitness for office. Clapper said Trump seems to be "looking for a way out" of the presidency.

"I really question his ability, his fitness to be in this office and I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it," Clapper said. "Maybe he is looking for a way out."

"I do wonder, as well about the people that attracted to this -- to this rally as others. You know, what are they thinking? Or why am I so far off base? Because I don't understand the adulation. Of course, that's why I think he gravitated to having this rally as ill-timed as it is," Clapper said.

"You said you questioned his fitness. Is he a threat to national security? The president?" Lemon asked. "Well, he certainly could be. Again, having some understanding of the levers that a president can exercise, I worry about, frankly, you know, the access to the nuclear codes," Clapper answered. <Source>

Bottom line …

To even suggest that any person with access to the nuclear codes would simply launch a strike on any nation that would result in thousands – if not hundreds of thousands – of innocent lives being sacrificed on the altar of personal ego is crazy and suggestive of a man so taken with self-serving partisan politics that he should be fired from CNN. This is tantamount to declaring President Trump to be as dangerous and/or deranged as North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un. But, then again, moral equivalency is part and parcel of the modus operandi of the progressive socialist democrats.

Who the hell is James Clapper, the lying, clueless former Director of National Intelligence who should have been prosecuted for lying to Congress about the intelligence community's illegally spying on American citizens?

Perhaps there is a tacit agreement in the intelligence community to remove a legally-elected President in favor of a socialist/communist dupe? Or, at least a dupe that can be easily manipulated by the past leadership of the intelligence community that has been so stunningly wrong on so many occasions?

Have we not learned a lesson from former FBI Director James Comey, a person who usurped the authority of the Department of Justice and unilaterally decided that a corrupt, lying Hillary Clinton should not be held accountable for her many criminal activities?

Leaving the nation’s affairs in the hands of incompetent and hyper-partisan hacks like James Clapper is a clear and present danger to America.

We are so screwed.

-- steve

"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius

The truth is that teaching should be treated like any other profession; with requirements for teaching ability and subject-matter knowledge. And like any other profession, there should be no absolute guarantee of employment or perks and privileges beyond that which is offered to all residents of the State of California. Likewise, there should be nothing to prevent a teacher from being removed from their position for malfeasance or any criminal act.

In fact, one might say that the progressive socialist democrats have so infiltrated the educational process and warped the curricula as to present a clear and present danger to the welfare of our communities, state, and nation.

Another example of progressive socialist Democrat hypocrisy can be found in California State Senate bill S.B. 807, a proposed tax exemption for teachers …

SB 807 would enact a tax credit and income exclusion for qualified teachers.

Proposed Law:

This bill would enact two tax benefits for teachers: (1) a personal income tax credit equal to 50 percent of specified costs a teacher must incur to earn a clear teaching credential (as defined), and (2) an income exclusion for 50 percent of any income received by teachers between their sixth and tenth years as a teacher of record in a California school.

Eligibility for the income exclusion is restricted to those teaching at a qualified high-poverty school, defined as a public school in California that enrolls pupils in kindergarten or grades 1-12, inclusive, that either: (1) meets the minimum identified percentage to be eligible to receive the free federal reimbursement rate for all reimbursable school breakfasts and lunches, pursuant to specified provisions of federal law, or (2) enrolled 62.5 percent or more pupils in the prior school year who were eligible for federal free or reduced priced meals, or schools not operational in the prior year that meet that standard in the current year.

Unused tax credits could be carried over for up to four additional years, until exhausted. Both tax benefits would commence in the 2017 taxable year, and sunset in 2026.

Why should we reward those who are destroying our culture and capitalist system with their progressive nonsense? Erasing history, demonizing achievers, both past, and present, indoctrinating our children with political correctness, multiculturalism, and the moral equivalency that erases any differences between good and evil – exceptional Americanism and destructive communism.

Why should we reward those who are producing yet another decade of functional illiterates whose dependence on electronic devices to perform the simplest of life-skills is growing every day?

Why should we reward members of a union that only supports a single party in return for outrageous perks and privileges?

And, why should we be concerned with an artificial shortage of teachers that was created by the open-door policies of our progressive legislators who have allowed illiterate, impoverished, sick, and criminal illegal aliens to flood our nation to change our American culture and to alter their allegiance from our nation to a perpetual Democrat party?

The progressive socialist Democrats have always projected their feelings, behavior, and activities onto their opposition, and with a complicit and biased mainstream media, I can also conclude, with great success. If one truly understood history, one would find that it was the Democrats that were behind slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, and who fought the civil rights movement with the fervor of racists. Even worse, members of Congress and the Supreme Court who were members of the Klan or known to be vicious racists were venerated by the Democrat party.

So it is the height of progressive hypocrisy to attack the GOP and President Trump for the staged media event in Charlottesville …

I have been looking around for a shorthand method of describing the Trump Administration and I believe I have found one …

THE LAVA LAMP

What better description than a yuge bubble at the bottom starts to rise and then breaks off into smaller bubbles that collide with other bubbles and eventual sink to the bottom once again?

Apparently I wasn’t the only one to think about this …

And perhaps it is all because we failed to read the slogan in context and understand the true meaning of Trump’s message …

Bottom line …

We are so screwed when everyone around Trump is treated like the help and dismissed whenever they do not bow to the boss and extoll, not his policies but his personal virtues. Of course, the Emperor has no new clothes.

Ranking Member Cohen to Introduce Articles of Impeachment Against President Donald Trump After Comments on Charlottesville (August 17, 2017)

Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, today announced that he will be introducing articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump following the President’s comments on the horrific events in Charlottesville, Virginia.

[OCS: Since when is Representative Steve Cohen the arbiter of free speech and what can and can’t be said.

The ugly truth is that the relatively few Klan and neo-Nazis are just as despicable as the larger group of violent anti-Semitic Marxist thugs waving the banner of Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the communist Industrial Workers of the World.

And, if anyone is to be condemned, it should be the Democrat Mayor who ordered the police to “stand down” and do nothing until commanded. It should be the thugs that arrived at a legal protest with ready-made signs and weapons. It should be the Democrats who gave us Slavery, the Klan, Segregation, the Jim Crow laws, and whose members voted against the various civil rights acts. A party that openly feted a high-ranking Klan official and whose party membership contained many prominent men of note who were vile racists.

So the charge over telling the literal truth, both sides were at fault, and not explicitly naming the groups is false, misleading, and malicious.]

“I have expressed great concerns about President Trump’s ability to lead our country in the Resolution of No Confidence (H.Res. 456) that I introduced in July with 29 of my colleagues; however, after the President’s comments on Saturday, August 12 and again on Tuesday, August 15 in response to the horrific events in Charlottesville, I believe the President should be impeached and removed from office.Instead of unequivocally condemning hateful actions by neo-Nazis, white nationalists and Klansmen following a national tragedy, the President said ‘there were very fine people on both sides.’ There are no good Nazis. There are no good Klansmen.”

“We fought a World War to defeat Nazis, and a Civil War to defeat the Confederacy.”

[OCS: And, we fought a cold war against the international socialists and communists many of whom infiltrated the government and other institutions with the sole goal of destroying America from within. And, we did not fight the Civil War to defeat the Confederacy, but to bind the nation together under a single federal government and Constitutional structure.]

“In reaction to the downfall of the Confederacy, and the subsequent passage of the Reconstruction Amendments to our constitution, the KKK embarked on a dastardly campaign to terrorize and intimidate African Americans from exercising their newly acquired civil rights.Subsequent incarnations of the Klan continued to terrorize African Americans with lynchings and civil rights murders such as the assassination of Medgar Evers and the killings of Schwerner, Chaney, Goodman and other civil rights workers.”

[OCS: How stupid, corrupt, or intellectually dishonest do you have to be to not note that the Klan was an invention of the Democrats. And, Robert C. Byrd, a recruiter for the Klan and who rose to become the Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of his local chapter, was an much honored Democrat. The Segregationists were Democrats including the notorious Governor and Sheriff who attempted to deny little black children access to school – until Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, sent in federal troops.]

“When I watched the videos from the protests in Charlottesville, it reminded me of the videos I’ve seen of Kristallnacht in 1938 in Nazi Germany. It appeared that the Charlottesville protesters were chanting ‘Jews will not replace us’ and ‘blood and soil,’ an infamous Nazi slogan, as they marched with torches that conjured up images of Klan rallies. None of the marchers spewing such verbiage could be considered ‘very fine people’ as the President suggested. And it certainly appeared the participants were in lock-step. Some of the white nationalist protesters were interviewed by the media, such as Sean Patrick Nielsen. He said one of his three reasons for being there was ‘killing Jews.’ Another was Christopher Cantwell, one of the white nationalist leaders, who said he couldn’t watch ‘that Kushner bastard walk around with that beautiful girl’ and said he hoped ‘somebody like Donald Trump, but who does not give his daughter to a Jew,’ would lead this country. As a Jew and as an American and as a representative of an African American district, I am revolted by the fact that the President of the United States couldn’t stand up and unequivocally condemn Nazis who want to kill Jews and whose predecessors murdered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, and could not unequivocally condemn Klansmen whose organization is dedicated to terrorizing African Americans.

[OCS: One look at Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam and you find a militant black separatist Marxist group that reviles Jews. The same with the Black Lives Matter crowd. So before we play the anti-Semitism card, we might be surprised to find that the Democrats open ignore anti-Semitic behavior but are quick to point out anything racial and anti-America.]

“President Trump has failed the presidential test of moral leadership. No moral president would ever shy away from outright condemning hate, intolerance and bigotry. No moral president would ever question the values of Americans protesting in opposition of such actions, one of whom was murdered by one of the white nationalists.

[OCS: Has Cohen read the Constitutional duties of the President? There is no such thing as moral leadership mentioned. And, one might say that the radical left’s hero, Franklin D. Roosevelt was a racist and anti-Semite. A man who condemned escaping Jews to a certain death at the hands of the Nazis when he denied them asylum in the United States. A moral president might condemn both sides of the hatred spectrum – even if both sides are involved with and supported by the Democrat Party.]

Senator John McCain rightfully tweeted this week that there was ‘no moral equivalency between racists and Americans standing up to defy hate.’

[OCS: those were not Americans standing up to defy hate, but the exact mirror of the hate from another viewpoint. These are the people that urge violence, killing cops, and are racists, bigots, and some of the most anti-America people to be found in our nation.]

Senator Marco Rubio tweeted, “Very important for the nation to hear @potus describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists.” President Trump has shown time and time again that he lacks the ethical and moral rectitude to be President of the United States. Not only has he potentially obstructed justice and potentially violated the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause, but he has also shown that he is incapable or unwilling to protect Americans from enemies, foreign and domestic. Neo-Nazis and the KKK are domestic terrorists. If the President can’t recognize the difference between these domestic terrorists and the people who oppose their anti-American attitudes, then he cannot defend us.”

Martin Niemöller, a prominent Protestant pastor who was an outspoken critic of Adolph Hitler, said:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

[OCS: Perhaps if Steve Cohen were not such a schmuck, he would realize that there are few speaking for the average American in Congress today. He is not upholding his oath when he supports unconstitutional activities. He is not upholding his oath when he places special interests above his constituency. And, he is certainly a racist when he supports the black people of his district over ALL people of his district.]

“They have come for me, and for the majority of my Congressional constituency.

[OCS: You poor delusional fool and useful idiot. The anti-America revolutionaries in Antifa, BLM, and IWW WERE YOUR PEOPLE!]

Accordingly, I must speak out today after what happened on Saturday and our President’s subsequent response. It is morally and legally incumbent upon me, based on my oath of office, to introduce articles of impeachment.”

[OCS: Where were your articles of impeachment when William Clinton gave a pass to a nuclear North Korea? Where were your articles of impeachment when Barack Obama interfered in a foreign election in Israel, spied on Americans, and worst of all, gave billions to our enemies as he allowed Iran to further its nuclear ambitions? And, where is your condemnation of the militant blacks that simply exist – not to further the cause of their people, but to divide and weaken America along class, racial, and gender lines?]

Truth be told, Representative Steve Cohen is furthering the destruction of America from within. Aided and abetted by a progressive mainstream media which is giving a public platform to these miscreants who hate America.

Bottom line …

People like Representative Steve Cohen are part of the problem – advancing the “popular” view of the day and refusing to call out evil wherever it may exist. Antifa, BLM, and IWW represent more of a threat to our nation than do a relatively few “white supremacists.” The operative word being “white.” Nothing said about the radical black supremacists who want to tear apart our nation to bring about a Marxist revolution.

The man is a corrupt schmuck and needs to be removed from office in 2018. One, for not telling the truth, and Two, for falsely attacking the President of the United States without pointing to a single impeachable offense under the Constitution.

We are so screwed.

-- steve

"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius